Archive for August 2008

Extrapool is this fantastic place in Nijmegen, Holland. I’ve done two gigs for the people there and I think they’re hella cool. I wrote about the first time I went there somewhere back in these pages if you want to hear my gushingly subjective stamp of approval but their website sez:

Extrapool is an artist run organisation in the middle of Nijmegen since the early nineties. About 12 people work in Extrapool, some as volunteers others on a more regular basis and five of them live there.
We organise art-events, concerts, performances and film inside the building but also outside the city. We have a soundstudio, a graphic studio and workspace where we make artistbooks and print f.e. posters, 2 guestrooms, a small shop and our public space where most of the events take place.

Anyway, I’m playing there on the 13th of September and Herr Kubin has just sent me the flyer, done by the self-evident genius of Mr Alfred Boland. Here’s that (front and back) plus the gumph in Dutch about the gig that sounds great but is unintelligible beyone intriguing hints to a mono-linguistic spacewaste such as myself.

The very, very good people at Norman Records are now selling No Pressure. I like Norman Records a lot. I find they often sell stuff cheaper than other online places, and can also be a good place to look if somewhere else has sold out of something. Anyway, they wrote this about the record:

Pete Um is a right mentalist. He does that whole bubbling, woozy electronic soundscape/ seriously bent electronic thing with warped absurdist poetry spread over the top like thick weird aural word gravy. This is dance music for people who have pink rubber furniture & sport 70s porn ‘taches without an hint of irony. ‘No Pressure’ it’s called is this album and i’m suitably impressed. Junk shop electronica from a one man mind mental, there’s some seriously barmy, disjointed vibes bouncing around in these bendy but catchy grooves. John Callahan, early Baby Bird, Wevie Stonder, Felix Kubin & Manchester’s wonderful Superqueens are handy reference points. For such an eccentric slab of vinyl, there’s much satisfaction to be had from repeated listens. With the current electronica world caught in some kind of strange purist rut, either minimal techno or (yawn) dubstep being the choice of many a backpacking uber spod, I think the time is nigh for the new wave of whirring odd-hop and downtempo gibbercore. Lovely warm production with a very human & quirky feel, you get a mix of playful electro, ambient snippets, stagger-beats, voice manipulation, wayward mogadon-techno and a vast array of beguiling electronic noises. This remarkable album could even work as the modern equivalent of a radiophonic workshop experiment, there’s some smart little tunes on here, my faveourite being ‘Holy Fire’ (Candie Hank remix). If you yearn for something a little different and individual then this vinyl shoulkd be in your bag. A highly inventive chap indeed! Ltd to 350 for the world, in a well colourful sleeve, inc lyric insert on the pioneering label, Gagarin

“As ever with Felix Kubin’s label Gagarin, no pressure by pete um is released as vinyl only which makes sense with the cool cover, And the music? The brit clearly is recruiting from new-wave-electronica-tape-loop-experiments, admitting to over-the-top complexions of time but above. grumpy avant-garde pop.”